New Delhi: Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has declared a state of emergency giving security forces sweeping powers for the second time in five weeks to deal with escalating anti-government protests.
The emergency orders will reportedly be implemented from midnight on Friday.
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The state of emergency gives the police and the security forces power to arbitrarily arrest and detain people.
A spokesman for the president on Friday night said he invoked the tough laws to “ensure public order” after trade unions staged a nationwide strike demanding his resignation over a worsening economic crisis.
Earlier today, the police again fired tear gas and water cannon at students trying to storm Sri Lanka’s parliament as the country was brought to a halt by a trade union strike demanding the government step down.
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Sri Lanka is going through its worst economic crisis in its history with the shortage of essentials, and power outages caused by a severe forex crisis.
Rajapaksa had declared an emergency on April 1 also after a mass protest opposite his private residence. He had revoked it on April 5.
Sri Lanka lost around 1 million taxpayers in the last two years after the Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime announced sweeping tax cuts in 2019 in its bid to spur growth, Finance Minister Ali Sabry has revealed, as the island nation faced an unprecedented economic crisis.
These tax cuts were introduced in November 2019 in keeping with President Rajapaksa’s election pledges.
The Cabinet had slashed the value-added tax (VAT) to eight percent from 15 percent and also abolished seven other taxes.
These sweeping tax cuts led to a credit rating downgrade in the following year, prompting Sri Lanka to get alienated in international financial markets.